Michelle King is a learning instigator, love activist and beloved community-architect. A true production of US foreign policy, she was born in 1968 to an African American father and an Ethiopian immigrant mother. Her father was a serviceman in the US Army, and she spent half her childhood in West Germany and the other half split amongst army bases in California, Colorado, and North Carolina. She has long been fascinated by the ideas and values around identity. Michelle grapples with this life-long inquiry of being raised an “American” outside of her country and reconciling what that actually means now living in America. All of her intersectional identities and lived experiences have deeply informed her practice as a middle school social science teacher for over 22 years. Currently, she is seeking to create dynamic learning experiences and opportunities that inspire wonder, discovery, contradictions, frustrations, and joy. Ultimately, all of this visible and invisible labor and creativity is in service of co-building the Beloved Community.

Current Conundrums: What do humans need to learn now? How might we create empathetic institutions that remind us of our humanity? How might we re-design for equity and social justice in and out of school learning? How might we design learning institutions to build connections? How might we allow those connections to help us re-see the worlds we inhabit? How might we embrace silence in our lives? How might we integrate our inner and outer environments as humans? How might we co-create the Beloved Community?